The ACM's Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computing Theory (SIGACT) will present the 2008 Gödel Prize for outstanding papers in theoretical computer science to Shang-Hua Teng, a 1991 ComputerScience PhD graduate, and Daniel A. Spielman for their development of Smoothed Analysis.

Teng, a professor of computer science at Boston University, and Spielman, a professor of applied mathematics and computer science at Yale University, will receive the award at the International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming July 6-13 in Reykjavik, Iceland.

The Smoothed Analysis technique developed by Spielman and Teng provided a way to explain the practical success of algorithms on real data and real computers that could not be clearly understood through traditional techniques. It has been the basis of considerable research since 2001.

Last year, Steven Rudich, professor of computer science received the Gödel Prize, along with Alexander A. Razborov, a mathematician and computational theorist at the Steklov Mathematical Institute in Moscow, for their work on the P vs. NP Problem.

In addition to his post at Boston University, Teng is senior research scientist at Akamai Technologies Inc., a visiting professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, and affiliated research professor of mathematics at MIT. Prior to joining Boston University, Teng taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Minnesota.